LinkedIn has just launched the latest versions of its mobile apps, and in a stunning reversal, it’s gone from mobile web-based apps back to fully native.

Less than a year ago, the company was touting its iPad app as fully mobile-web based, with just one screen, the homescreen, running natively. Now, all that’s gone, as is some of the optimism about the current capabilities of the mobile web.

In a revealing chat with Kiran Prasad (pictured), LinkedIn’s senior director for mobile engineering, we learned exactly why — and it’s not what you think. Prasad said performance issues weren’t causing crashes or making the app run slowly. What he did say shows that HTML5 for the mobile web still has a bright future — but only if developers are willing to build the tools to support it.